


Flesh and Bone

by Jacynon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Past Relationship(s), shortfic, this is completely from akaashi's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8835796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacynon/pseuds/Jacynon
Summary: The one time they broke up, it lasted about two months before Keiji decided his already meaningless life had been stripped of the one thing that actually made it bearable. He was about three weeks into his reestablished relationship with Bokuto and once again found himself weighing his options.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is. A super self-indulgent fic that you could say is more of the start of something I wanted to eventually turn into a longer story. It's also a test to see if I can capture Akaashi's character accurately. Though you could also call this a sort of close to home piece too. Either way, I hope you enjoy!

Living alone in a dorm was both a blessing and a curse.

If anyone were to write a guide on how to avoid socialization when you so deeply yearned for it, Keiji Akaashi was the man for that. He was quiet in school, _knew_ there were girls in his classes staring at him, had turned down both relationships and friendships alike more times than he bothered to count, and it was really _his_ fault after all that he'd been so alone.

No sense in living within his own self-pity when it was his fault.

_(Except, whoops, that was actually his apparent favorite place to be.)_

For a time, he'd assumed that his tendency to distance himself from others came from a desire to be alone, but that wasn't it. Nothing about it had to do with what he actually wanted. Loneliness came naturally to him. Isolation was his instinct.

It wasn't like he _needed_ to have other friends. He already had the one person he needed. Humans factually needed human interaction, and Keiji liked to think of himself as completely set in that regard. Bokuto was his source of human interaction. That was the extent of a social life he'd retained for the past couple of years. In fact, it was the best source, because he was able to express his romantic urges towards someone, however lackluster they were.

Now, the _sexual_ urges - those were what he was especially thankful to finally have an outlet for.

Bokuto being his boyfriend was the best thing that had happened to his life.

Not that he really _recognized_ that until very recently.

In all honesty, the realization that he didn't need anyone else didn't really become obvious until they broke up.

The one time they broke up, it lasted about two months before Keiji decided his already meaningless life had been stripped of the one thing that actually made it bearable. He was suddenly out of friends - well, he'd had _acquaintances_ , ones he was sure would be happy to become his friends - but that idea sent a black hole into his stomach so big it absorbed everything that motivated him to go through with it.

Would've taken away his grasp on emotional control, too, if he hadn't already lost that.

Keiji was miserable.

It was Bokuto who called him up to apologize.

_(That would've made him laugh if it didn't make him want to throw up.)_

He was about three weeks into his reestablished relationship with Bokuto and once again found himself weighing his options.

And it wasn't like things had been going particularly _badly_ , even. In fact, it almost seemed like their relationship had taken a total one-eighty. They were actually talking to each other for once instead of bottling up all of their heated emotions about each other until it _exploded_ and oh _god_ , the casualties, everyone's _dead_ , but y'know. Metaphorically. But now everything was different. It was healthy. It had communication.

But even after all of that, there lied doubt in the pit of his gut.

He recognized an overwhelming fear there, too, and a slight dash of anxiety made it a disgusting cocktail of _"What-I-Feel-When-Koutaro-Bokuto-Isn't-Around,"_ appropriately named because it had been practically nonexistent during the times they actually spent time together. When his partner was around, everything was fine. Actually, everything was great. Better than great. Keiji was _happy_. He wasn't often happy.

Then, like a bothersome cockroach, it reared its ugly head anytime Keiji was on his own. In the shower, in his empty dorm, staring into the bright screen of his phone as he read and re-read and _re_ -re-read his messages with Bokuto. Though whether it was to possibly make himself feel better or to find more mistakes he'd made to make himself feel even worse, he couldn't exactly decipher.

What if things went bad _again?_ What if he lashed out and pushed all the blame on Bokuto _again?_ What if he was just going to ultimately lead Bokuto into thinking he was safe to talk to, to be around, to open up his heart to, only to betray that trust _again?_

It wasn't like he'd been conscious of the fact that he'd been doing those things, at the time.

Regardless, it made him want to run away. Again. Like a fucking coward. _Again_.

It was almost like Keiji's fight or flight instinct was broken, like his brain was broken, because he leaned much heavier on the _flight_ side than he figured was normal for a human being. It'd been a bad habit that never really went away, even if he wanted it to, even if he really, _really_ wanted it to, so badly that it hurt even more than when he'd tear his hair out in the bathroom every other night.

_(Which, by the way, had actually decreased in frequency since they started dating again. He filed that away in his list of reasons to stay put.)_

What was that saying? _"You don't know what you've got until it's gone"_?

Story of his fucking life.

They were walking on eggshells around each other and acting like they didn't even exist, like they weren't even digging into the soles of each other's feet. They'd barely even kissed in the past weeks they'd been together, which was virtually unheard of when they were first dating, but it didn't seem _right_ to be so physically intimate. The intimacy was there, but it'd translated more into the emotional side of their relationship lately.

A buzzing filled the air, interrupting him as he stared blankly at the homework he wasn't doing.

To his side, his phone vibrated, making him jump and drop his pencil, though he caught it just before it rolled off the desk. He'd kept the device on either vibrate or silent almost constantly, hating loud and sudden noises in almost every situation and hating to check his phone calls and texts even more. Flipping open the screen, he frowned at the name appearing in his messages.

It was one from Tetsurou Kuroo.

_"Taking the boy to a movie. He wanted to ask you on a date, said he might not cause he didn't want to impose. Dinner at 9, Saturday, you call the place and ask him, K?"_

On the bright side, at least the guy cared about Bokuto's happiness just as much as Keiji felt like he personally did. Not that Kuroo would've _believed_ that, but he couldn't find that he cared quite enough about that fact to dwell on it for more than about two minutes. He sent a quick text back, not wanting to open it up to any sort of conversation that in all likelihood wouldn't even happen.

_"K."_

His relationship with Kuroo was...strained, to say the least.

Both he and Bokuto ended up attending the same college, making their already strong friendship even _stronger_ , and it gradually became less of him being just another friend to Keiji and became more of him being the best friend of Keiji's boyfriend and a general acquaintance outside of that.

And once Keiji and Bokuto had broken up, that was it, it was essentially like indirectly cutting ties with Kuroo, too. They were basically dead to each other at that point.

And once he started dating Bokuto again?

 _Well_. Keiji began to chewing on his pencil and laced his free fingers in his hair. Things never really were able to go back to the way they were before, and he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted them to. It wasn't as if his personality had ever really meshed well with Kuroo's, anyway.

A quick evaluation determined that the loss wasn't nearly significant enough to worry about, and that it likely wasn't a loss that Kuroo had been too heartbroken about, either.

_(Keiji wondered, then, why that fact was so inherently irritating to him.)_

Just before he pushed his face into his pillow and called it a night, leaving his work out to take care of in the morning yet again, he grabbed at his phone one more time.

_"Let's plan a date, Kou. I'll call you tomorrow."_


End file.
